Storm Damage
After missing out on their first weekend of softball due to a scheduling oversight and a major winter storm in the southern US, the Radford Highlanders were eager to hit the field this past weekend. Their opening weekend took them all the way from Virginia to Alabama for a handful of games at Troy University.
Things got started on Friday morning with an early game against Central Arkansas University. Home of the "sugar bears", I kid you not. How would you like that to be your uni mascot? Has anyone even ever seen a sugar bear? Do they have those in zoos? I might have to Google that...
Anyway, Radford came away with a win in their first game 6 to 1 over the Sugar Bears. After that, they had a game later in the morning against IU Indy and they also won that game 5 to 1.
Saturday morning they faced Central Arkansas again and ended up falling short 9 to 2 in a tough loss to a team that they practically dominated the day before. In the first three games, our niece got to see very little playing time. She was put in occasionally as a pinch runner for the catcher or pitcher. It wasn't until their final game on Saturday night that she got the start at second base. I think the coach is still trying to figure out what to do with the infield, so it will likely be a pretty common occurrence for her to not play all games in a double header or weekend tournament.
In the game she did start, she had some awesome defensive plays at second base, and she also went 1 for 3 at the plate and got left on base 1 time. I believe the other two at bats she flew out. That puts her stats on the season so far at 1 hit (which was a double that she maybe could have stretched to a triple given her speed), two assists, and 3 put outs. That's a pretty good start to the season in my opinion.
They were supposed to play another game on Sunday, but that got cancelled due to a pretty significant storm system that was moving through the area.
Meanwhile, Tiffin University, the team our oldest niece used to play for had a rough start to their weekend. According to our niece who was getting updates, one of their vehicles broke down on their way from Ohio to Kentucky and they ended up only being able to play two games in their weekend. The games on Sunday also got cancelled due to the same storm system that was wrecking havoc in Alabama for Radford.
The Tiffin Dragons had a couple of huge wins in the games they did play. They beat Bluefield State University 8 to 0 in five innings due to a run rule victory, and then they took down Lincoln Memorial University 6 to 3. This was a big weekend for the Dragons after having dropped a 3 out of 4 games in their first weekend of action the week before. I hope this continues to be a strong season for Tiffin even if our niece is no longer on the team. I plan on following them either way.
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